I found this book to have beautiful prose that evoked a magical victorian sort of mood. It is a philosophical work that makes me think about what it means to be thought to be "different", yet be entirely human. The plot, however, is slow. I highly recommend it for people who revel in "literary" science fiction and fantasy, but not for people who are looking for a rousing action tale. I would love to read more by this author. To date, however, she has not published any additional work, though she was rumored to be at work on something. ( )

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I wanted very much tolike this book. In fact, I did enjoy the first half, and told all myfriends they =had= to read it. Then I finished it... To say I was disappointed is mild. I was angry. I felt utterly short-changed by Bakis who dodged all the important questions of interaction between the human and non-human, who required more than her fair share of willing suspensions of disbelief (all authors get one per story; it is to be hoped they make the most of it. In Monster Dogs, the allowed suspension of disbelief must be that the dogs can exist at all.), and who never delved deeply enough into her characters to allow us to know them on any important level. By the thudding end of the book, which should have been a kind of decadent doggish Gotterdammerung, all I felt was relief - relief that the monster dogs' short, unhappy existence had come to an end fairly naturally, and relief that the book was over. The issues Bakis could have and should have raised in this book would have made a story at least twice as long. She utterly fudged the issue of the dogs' murder of their human masters by making Rankstadt so obscure that it was impossible to find the place and verify the story of the slaughter. (How convenient, now we don't have to deal with the issue of the murders in any realistic way.) She fudged the issue of acceptance by making them fabulously wealthy (Anne Rice did this in "Belinda" and raised my hackles.), and by plunking them down in New York and explaining that New Yorkers are more sophisticated than most people and rather liked the dogs' oddness. (But what about the rest of the world? What sort of never-never land is this?) Most of all she fudged the issue of the relationship between Cleo and Ludwig. We're supposed to believe that these two loved each other? How? How many times did they actually see each other? What sort of intimacy (and I don't necessarily mean sexual intimacy here.) did they exchange? Did we ever see any indication that each of them found the other special in any way? We're told they did, but that's bad writing. We needed to be shown. And the problem here is that if we were to see a more intimate interaction then the issue of sexuality would at least have to be acknowledged if not acted upon. Better to have left the issue unraised than to deal dishonestly with it. What I would tell Bakis is that her writing is not bad, but it would improve dramatically if she gave more time and thought to characterization, did not raise issues she was not prepared to deal with, and told us less while showing us more. Show don't tell, show don't tell - a lesson that should be engraved on the heart of any writer. On the plus side - yes there is one - the idea, though obviously cribbed from H. G. Welles' Dr. Moreau, is a wonderful one, and she deals with it in an original way, Bakis' style is clean and direct, and quite easy to read, and I think she shows some talent for pastiche. I will certainly consider reading her next book. Do I recommend this one? Yes and no. If you read it uncritically and are willing and able to fill in the huge gaps in the information we're given, it may not disappoint. Failing that, I'd have to say "no." ( )

Loved it. Dark, heart-rending and beautifully captured.

An elegant and beautiful novel, a dream-like memoir of the (future) time when the Monster Dogs lived in New York, told by an intimate human friend.

The narrator Cleo's relationship with the genetically altered, intelligent, speaking dogs explores what we mean by friendship, by love, by identification with the Other, by sanity itself. How far can we change who we are and still be who we are? Can we ever change enough to leave who we are behind? ( )

Weird, depressing, and rather pointless. The dogs are described, but they react too oddly for me to feel I knew them - and the girl started to behave the same way. So why _was_ she so obsessed with her possessions, and yet abandoned them to stay in the fortress? And there was no resolution, no _point_ to the story. This would be a good SF story for people who enjoy mainstream novels (since my opinion of them is that most of them are depressing and pointless!) Hmmm...and it's due to start in 10 months... ( )